


to lead the travelers off the beaten path

by KatRoma



Series: of pinwheels and paper daffodils [5]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Developing Relationship, F/M, Female Uchiha Sasuke, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, Manipulation, Non-Explicit Sex, This Was Supposed to Be Published on Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-18
Updated: 2015-02-18
Packaged: 2018-03-13 13:04:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3382550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatRoma/pseuds/KatRoma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sasuke doesn't understand romantic love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	to lead the travelers off the beaten path

**Author's Note:**

> This might be one of the most fucked up things I've ever written, which includes the last chapter of "trapped in the amber of this moment." I fully blame this essay I just had to write on the evolution of sex and sexual manipulation in inversions of the Cinderella story. Another essay is what stopped this from coming out on the 14th. So, happy belated Valentine's Day, enjoy all the non-explicit underage sexual activity. 
> 
> Also, there are a lot of OCs. Just so you know. 
> 
> Yeah, KakaSasu is just what got the most requests.

At thirteen, Sasuke lets a Tani-nin kiss her just inside the walls of his village. It’s night, the moon is covered by clouds, and the boy has hair like sand and eyes like a storm. There’s a splash of freckles across the bridge of his nose. He’s nothing like anyone she knows.

She has a week without a mission, and is spending it with her cousin, who’s gone off to a recon she declined assisting him in. The Tani-nin’s name is Hiro, he’s a jounin, and he thinks she’s sixteen and a visiting civilian. A few days ago marked a chuunin exam festival, and they struck up a conversation outside a florist’s booth about koi fish and water lilies. With her seven days of nothing, and Obito nowhere to be found, she was bored and made a friend. The kiss isn’t entirely unexpected; he’s cute, maybe she’d been flirting. Either way, she let him, and his lips are chapped and his hands callused and she thinks it’s appropriate she loses something so many people are hung up on to a stranger on the low wall surrounding a public park.

When she moves away, he’s flushed, freckles standing out against his blush. A breeze sweeps by, the September air in Tani cooler than Konoha, and she pulls his jacket tighter around herself. “Sorry,” he says. “It’s just, you said you’re leaving, and I. I thought maybe I should try it at least once.”

He has hair like sand and eyes like a storm, and looks nothing like anyone she knows. There’s a look on his face, hard and soft all at once, ready for rejection. “It’s all right,” she says, and lets him kiss her again.

 

 

Though Sasuke keeps the name Harbinger, more often than not she can take care of her opponent, and do it quickly and efficiently. Regardless, she likes to keep her fights out of villages, and prefers to coax her target to somewhere secluded and safe.

Winters in the Earth Country are cold enough to freeze blood  from a mortal wound, and she tells Tsubasa of Kiri, “I have an apartment on the outskirts. Let’s get out of this snow. Oh, now. Don’t tell me you’re scared.”

Today she’s a local named Keiko, sixteen again and a little orphan girl prone to bad life choices. Often times, she uses feminine weapons to give the illusion of weakness, but she’s never weaponized femininity like this before. With a village too remote for Kisame to enter without attracting attention, and her eyes in perfect order, her options are limited. Tsubasa of Kiri likes girls, at least, pliable ones with slim waists, and an edge of sarcasm. She imitates what she’s seen other women do, and stands too close, bites her lip, makes certain he can see just enough of her figure even through the jacket and pants. There are snowflakes in her hair, and she wonders if her lips are blue like Yuki-onna, that ghostly spirit of winter known to lead lost souls off the beaten path.

His breathing’s harsh, blowing steam over her head, and he blocks her off before they reach her imaginary house where Kisame’s waiting. When Tsubasa kisses her, she lets him—lets him card his fingers through her hair, and slip a hand up her shirt. Both of them are cold, so much so she barely feels him against the bare skin of her stomach. She takes a kunai from her pouch, a normal one for once, and moves as though she means to lock her arms around his neck. Between the numbness of the cold and her body, he’s too distracted to notice, and falls dead to the ground, throat slit to the bone.

Kisame materializes in the steady snowfall, the Akatsuki cloak a stain against the white landscape. “You didn’t even leave any for me,” he says, looking from the corpse to her. “That was dangerous, kid.”

“I know,” she answers, and wonders what Itachi would think if he saw her just then.

Tsubasa’s hair was the color of Kichiro’s, and she doesn’t allow herself to think of Konoha instead.

 

 

Like any of Sasuke’s weapons, her body is an efficient means to reach a goal, and like any of her weapons, she learns the ins and outs of it fast.

Now she’s fourteen, in the Lightning Country, though her targets are foreign, and today’s mission involves the death of two people. Outside, Kisame handles the S-ranked guard, and any other that stand in his way. She has the Wind Country Daimyo, a middle age man of middling status with greying hair and frown lines deeper than his desert canyons. With the normalness of her appearance, she does what Kisame can’t, and enters his inn without issue, pretending to be staff. She flirts, and makes him feel young and special again. There’s a wedding ring on his finger they both ignore. After a while, she has break, and he tells his closest guard to stay outside the door.

She doesn’t allow it to go far, touches him just enough to make the right sounds to keep the guard outside from being suspicious. An August thunderstorm rattles the window and pelts the roof, loud enough to cover whispers. “Wouldn’t it be better if I’m on top?” she says when her dress is already half off and, hilariously, he’s the one to flip them.

Before he can react, she has a hand over his mouth, and a knife of origami paper to his inner thigh. “Scream, or try anything,” she tells him quietly, “and I cut your femoral artery. Understand?” Once he nods, she adds, “I’m going to remove my hand now. Tell me everything you know about Nii Yugito.”

When she moves her hand, he says, “I’m not tell you anything,” and doesn’t relent even when she smiles with a please, and promises not to kill him.

In the end, she uses the Sharingan, and kills him anyway. Lying never gets anyone anywhere, but sometimes it’s worth a try.

 

 

The Saiken Jinchuruki is only one not protected by the village, and though Konan’s reluctant, Sasuke’s given the mission to go after him alone. Neither pretend not the recognize the other when they meet in the Wave Country, and she lies, saying she defected from the Akatsuki because they’re deplorable now that she’s old enough to be useful. They bond over defecting from their village. They bond over rejection and the darkness of humanity. She laughs, and says they would make a good team.

Three days after they meet, he trusts her, but he’s still too good, and too clever. He knows exactly how old she is, but a jounin is a jounin. When he pushes her back against his bedroll, set up on a riverside thick with the smell of hydrangea, she allows it. They undress in halfs, both too careful to risk complete vulnerability, and he asks, “Virgin?”

She lifts an eyebrow. “Is that a problem?”

It’s late April, and she’s fourteen, and kunoichi aren’t known to lose their virginity in the most loving of ways. This is the closest to real she could hope for, and doesn’t appreciate that it feels good. Years ago, she was in this country with Team Seven fighting off another missing-nin from Kiri, and almost died to save a friend. She doesn’t let herself imagine what Naruto would think if he knew.

He rolls off her when they’re done, sweat sticking his to his body. “I prefer to be alone,” he says, “but you. You were good.”

“I prefer having a partner,” she says, “but to each their own, I guess. Did you seriously just spend three days straight with me to sleep with me?”

Her eyes are glowing with the Mangekyo Sharingan when he turn to look with her, and with his pants caught around his knees and body loose from sex, he doesn’t have time to do anything before she sends him into Kamui. Without her, even the Saiken can’t get him out, so she stands, stumbling from chakra exhaustion into the river to clean herself off.

Utakata better have his pants back up by the time she returns to Ame, because the last thing she wants to do explain this incident to Pein.

 

 

In early July, she sleeps with Iwa-nin who doesn’t recognize her for information on the Kokuo Jinchuruki, and it doesn’t take threat of death to get him to talk. On her way back to Ame, she scrubs herself down again in another river not far from Takigakure, and runs into Kakashi.

Though she felt his chakra the day she captured the Isobu, she hadn’t seen him, and this is first time she’s laid eyes on him since the Oto-nin came for her. He looks no different, the grey of his hair masking any aging, and the only skin showing a bit of his face, and part of his fingers. In comparison, here’s she, in nothing but a pair of shorts and a chest wrap. The day’s hot and sunny, turning the grey of his hair silver, and she hasn’t felt this naked in a long while.

She hopes the Iwa-nin didn’t leave any marks.

“Hey, Kakashi,” she says when she finds her voice. His eyes, flat and dark, don’t move from hers. “Did Konoha send you here to kill me yet?”

A gust ruffles the leaves of the trees, fluttering shadows across his face and the water. She steps from the river to gather her shirt and cloak, knowing the answer even before he says, “No,” because her back is turned, and he hasn’t tried to plunge the Chidori through her. She ties on her shirt, and feels no more protected.“But I still should.”

The thought of Kakashi hurting her is laughable. Do it, she thinks, I dare you, and doesn’t know if she hates or loves that he never could.

 

 

Kissing a girl isn’t terribly different from kissing a boy, Sasuke finds. Since she’s small in stature, most people are bigger than she is, and kunoichi aren’t known for using moisturizer anymore than shinobi are. If she saw a better option, she wouldn’t be doing this at all, but she wants to enter Orochimaru’s territory with as little detection as possible, and the dead or immobile cause questions. By now, she doesn’t care much about what that means.

Aiko knows exactly why she’s here, and doesn’t seem to care, either. “Did I pay my toll properly?” Sasuke says, annoyed.

“I don’t know,” Aiko answers, not moving back enough to let Sasuke away from the tree. If she thinks she’s being threatening, then clearly she’s never had a man only take no for an answer when he’s dead, or close enough to it. Her eyes are a bit like Naruto’s, too, which doesn’t help better the effect. “I could use a little more convincing.”

Resigned, Sasuke allows it to play out the way the other girl wants, and decides the anatomy might be different, but the principle’s the same. Giving up your body is still giving up your body. It doesn’t matter who the recipient is.

“Good luck, Sasuke-chan,” Aiko says, waving her on her way. “Have fun dying.”

Though it was a risk, the girl keeps her word, and Sasuke makes it the rest of the way without hassle.

 

 

After the capture of Nii Yugito, Sasuke has fourteen days to herself. She spends the time in the River Country, and the vender at the vegetable stand gives her free tomatoes starting the third day.

It’s chilly, worse for her now that she always feels cold, but she takes walks with Kenji around the village after shop hours anyway. He’s every bit what a civilian should be; his black hair is neat, and soft, his hands smooth, his skin as unmarred as hers. She doesn’t look him in the eyes much, because they’re slate grey, and make her think of Kakashi, and she’d rather not think of Konoha these days. Unfortunately, the vegetable vender used to give her free tomatoes there, too.

To Kenji, she’s a schoolgirl who was supposed to come here with a friend, except the friend never came. “Of all places,” he says, “why this village? It’s in the middle of nowhere.”

With a shrug, she says, “Cheap inns,” and doesn’t tell him that once she came here for a birthday, and wanted to see if the pinwheels were still sold in the riverside stalls. They aren’t.

He kisses her at the door to the inn every night. When they sleep together, she initiates it, wanting to know what it’s like to have sex for something other than a mission. It happens in his bedroom, on nice sheets with her head against a handmade pillow, and a low level genjutsu stops him from seeing the Rinnegan. No one else is home, but she’s still conscious of the homemade food in the downstairs kitchen, and the family pictures lining the stairwell walls.

“How much longer are you staying?” he asks, moving her hair out of her face, and she’s mildly surprised at how relieved she is that she doesn’t need to wheedle information out of him now.

She answers, “A week,” and leaves the next morning.

 

 

When Sasuke returns to Konoha, she goes through a round of questioning. After the Council decides she can be assimilated back into Konoha society after a minimum of two weeks in the psychiatric ward followed by four months’ probation, Tsunade switches out the psychologist that failed to connect with a new one. The new one is a woman by the name of Saito Naomi who looks at Sasuke like she’s something to pull apart. She can see by Naomi’s hands and posture that she was a kunoichi once, and must have a glowing record to be given the Harbinger of the Akatsuki as a patient, but she’s not the worst Sasuke’s met.

This wouldn’t matter if Sasuke wasn’t a little off, probably, but as much as she feels she doesn’t deserve to walk free as a Konoha citizen again, the verdict’s already decided. The best she can do now is keep Naomi from believing anything other than Sasuke’s learned her lesson. It won’t do to be stuck in these four walls wearing her old teammates’ spare clothing for more than two weeks. Without the Sharingan or Rinnegan at her disposal, she does the next best thing, and slowly flirts her way into good favor.

Men and women aren’t all that different, really. It’s not hard to flirt with a person without them ever realizing flirting was involved. Even sexual preference doesn’t matter much; everyone likes to be liked, and subtle compliments are better than slathering it on.

After two weeks of carefully constructed breakdowns, an even more carefully constructed coming to terms with her captive-bonding, and keeping Naomi’s ego afloat, Sasuke’s allowed to leave in the minimum amount of time. Kisame once told her they took manipulation like this out of the kunoichi studies curriculum after the war. Whoever decided on that was an idiot, Sasuke thinks, because there are few things more useful than this.

 

 

Kakashi offered to take in Sasuke, and Tsunade lets him, because he’s trustworthy and more than that, he can kill her if it turns out she’s just an exceptionally good liar. Within the first few days, she sees him almost exclusively without his mask. Similarly, she doesn’t cover the Rinnegan beyond the first couple. It leaves her feeling bare, and as though he’s bare, and she keeps her eye hidden by her hair around anyone else.

In stilted, painful conversation, they talk about Obito, where he both wants to believe that her that at heart, her cousin is a good person, but also refusing to. It takes longer, though, for him to ask, “Did you know I was there? At the Spirit Festival?”

Today she’s sixteen, and Naruto and Sakura have just left, but half a cotton cheesecake remains on the kitchen table. She and Deidara shared a slice, she remembered, and swallows down the grief. “Yeah,” she says. “I did. I didn’t want you getting involved. That was the day I captured the Isobu.”

His hand stills, chopsticks caught mid-click. “What?” he says. “ _Where_?”

“Top of Mugen no Yama,” she answers. “It was anticlimactic. Interestingly, a whole block of snow slid off the mountainside at one point, and Deidara never got a chance to make it. Maybe there’s some truth to the legend.”

Two weeks later, she was in the Earth Country, and Tsubasa was slipping his hand up her shirt. That little girl might’ve been right, too, years ago when she called Sasuke Yuki-onna. “At that river,” Kakashi says, dodging the topic, and suddenly not looking her in the eye. “You seemed scared. Was it because...you know?”

He has trouble saying her cousin’s name, but that’s all right, because she does too. When she smiles, it’s lacking humor, and she really does wonder what Konoha would do with her if they knew half of what she did. “I just didn’t like the idea of going back,” she answers. “That was also right when I was getting sick, which I stupidly didn’t tell anyone about. Itachi was smart enough to slow down. I just accelerated.”

After the illness developed in full, she used to wonder if people could tell just by looking at her, or if they could taste the blood in her mouth. Then she realized no one did, and it confirmed the idea that the act of getting intimate with someone reveals nothing unless you know what to look for.

With one glance, though, Kakashi knew, when they met in Oto. “Well,” he says. “You’ll be better soon. Ready to come on missions with the old team again? Except you’ll be a jounin and Sai’s there, so I guess it’s not exactly the same.”

Konoha missions mean never letting herself be vulnerable again. When it started, she thought it was harmless. Now she isn’t so sure.

“Yeah,” she answers.

She doesn’t know if she’s lying or not.

 

 

On Team Seven’s sixth mission back together, they don’t have the money to afford two rooms, and all Sasuke wants is a shower to get the swamp muck out of her hair. She says leaves it to her, and the daughter of the inn owner gives them four.

Sasuke keeps the girl quiet so she doesn’t wake whoever’s next door, and is horrified that she doesn’t have the decency to change the sheets afterwards. “My parents will notice if I replace them in the middle of the night,” she says, as if somehow it’s Sasuke’s fault, and maybe it would’ve been better to forgo the shower after all.

When the girl’s gone, she takes another, and thinks that at least girls aren’t as messy as men. The water pressure’s good, and she turns it hot enough to burn. Sakura won’t question it if Sasuke says she isn’t use to sleeping on missions alone, because few people question most of what she does these days. Besides, she can’t guarantee she won’t light the sheets on fire if she stays here. This is the first time she’s ever been confronted with exactly how gross the aftermath of sex is, because she isn’t normally in a position where she needs to sleep until morning.

She walks into the wrong room, or maybe the right one, too distracted to pay attention to chakra signatures, and Kakashi’s still up, scrutinizing the mission scroll. “I switched rooms with Sakura,” he says before she can back away. His mask’s pushed down, caught around his neck, and he’s using his Sharingan to memorize the writing. “Thought I might have a reason to be worried. What was your excuse going to be?”

“You don’t need to sound so judgmental,” she says, defensive. “We’d be stuck in the rain.”

“I can’t judge when I’ve done worse,” he says bluntly, and turns down the covers on to opposite side of the bed. “Hope the light doesn’t bother you.”

Tomorrow they’ll have to wake up early if they don’t want to explain this, and Sasuke hates waking up early, but she takes up the offer anyway, pulling the blankets to her chin.

When she wakes, they’re back to back, and he’s not under the covers. She can feel his chakra, feel that he’s awake, too, and wonders if he stayed to prove a point.

 

 

Though she misses her family, of course, being back in Konoha makes her happy. After six months, most of the village trusts her again, and it’s a better feeling than she thought it would be. She also should’ve known it would be used against her.

The only reason she said nothing about the Sandaime and village elders’ involvement in Itachi’s massacre of her clan was to avoid complications. Now she sits at a table in a building she’s never seen, asked here under false pretenses, with Shimura Danzo across from her. “I thought we should finally meet, Sasuke,” he says, and smiles too pleasantly for this situation. “How are you adjusting to life back in Konoha?”

“It’s good,” she says. The light above them is bright, and her shadow is nonexistent, caught in a circle around her. His is thrown across the wall behind him. “My team still works well together.”

His eye, like hers, is covered, and she remembers Itachi’s story of Shisui losing his Sharingan. In another life, one where no one was killed and her cousin retained his eyes, she would’ve married him, most likely. He was her third cousin, and powerful enough for the main house. How she would’ve felt, she doesn’t know, but she does know it makes this somehow worse.

Still smiling, Danzo says, “Yes. I read your mission reports. I see you recovered well.” When she nods, he continues, “Sasuke, I have a question for you, and I need you to be honest.”

Without a chakra dampener on her wrist, she can resist anything he attempts with Shisui’s eye, she reminds herself. “Right,” she says. “Okay.”

“I was wondering,” he says, “what your brother told you about the unfortunate night of your family’s deaths.”

“He always refused to talk about it,” she says, “and I don’t really remember anything. You know, going blind made things confusing and all. Why?”

He stands, movement slow, and she’s aware suddenly that she’s just sixteen, a girl barely reaching five feet tall, and she isn’t in control. As hard as she tries, she can’t see a way to gain control, either. “See,” he says, “I don’t believe you. Your family was planning to rise against the Sandaime, which your brother was vehemently against. He came to me, and together, we made a plan. He told me he would handle it as long as I kept you safe. I didn’t know what he meant to do. And he certainly wasn’t supposed to take you with him.”

“I went blind,” she says. “He did the only thing he could think of—you seriously asked a kid murder his whole family? And you’re just confessing this to me?”

“No, no,” he says, and she feels for guards outside, but finds none. His self-confidence around her is astounding. “I know how your brother felt for you, Sasuke. You’re quite right, actually; there wouldn’t have been much future for a blind little girl in Konoha without family to train her. But I suspected he may have told you it was my decision, and others too, I assume, to keep you from running away. I blame myself for what happened. A boy of thirteen didn’t deserve to be put in the position he did, and it’s sadly understandable he saw that as his only option. You, too, have made decisions you regret to protect the ones you care about, if the reports are true.”

She doesn’t have an argument against that, she realizes. For three years, she stayed with the Akatsuki because they helped raise her, and she loved them, but she often went out of her way to lead them from Konoha and Naruto. That three day affair with the Saiken Jinchuruki was one of them, and she’s the one who suggested they go after the Isobu first rather than Naruto again while Konoha was weak from political change.

You’re lying, she wants to say, but just seven months ago she attempted to make Pein and Konan choose, and fight off her cousin.

Regaining the composure she knows she lost, she asks, “Then why steal my cousin’s eye? Shisui was against the uprising, too. I might’ve had family after all, so don’t act as though you’re entirely innocent.”

“As I said,” he answers, “sometimes we make regrettable choices.”

In another life, if she still became a jounin at thirteen, her parents wouldn’t have waited until she was eighteen. She would have married this year, most likely, she sixteen, he twenty-two, because Itachi would’ve died first, and it’s doubtful she would last long enough. Without her, it would pass to her uncle, who was incompetent, and never developed the Sharingan, or had sons of his own. Women can take charge of the Uchiha clan, but the family preferred a man. Shisui would’ve been perfect.

Now a non-Uchiha has his eye.

She swallows hard. Outside, thunder rumbles, but no rain or lightning comes. “What do you want from me?” she says. “I know you didn’t just call me out to some remote shack in the forest to discuss politics from nine years ago. If it’s not to tell, don’t worry. I’m not that stupid.”

Again, he smiles, colder than before. There are ten ways to kill  him, and make it look as if it weren’t her. “No, your intelligence is exceptional, I think,” he says. “Naomi is very good, and you did a remarkable job fooling her. The Rinnegan makes you very special, Sasuke, and it’s going to waste on so many B-and-A-ranked missions when we have trouble brewing against Konoha outside the Akatsuki. I want you to work for me, personally—”

“What? No!”

“—purely on solo missions. You will dress in ANBU gear, and tell no one.”

“What the hell do I owe you that makes you think this is okay?” she says, and finally, he moves, circling the table. “The Godaime promised I was allowed to decide.”

His free arm finds the back of her chair, and she stiffens. It’s like Obito, on the days she was acting like a child and he was angrier than usual, less at her and more at the world. She’s skilled, but so are others, and she relies on using her opponent’s power against them because she’s sixteen and small and lacking in the area of physical strength.

If she’s lucky, she could kill Danzo right here and get away with it, but luck is rarely on her side. “I have reason to suspect Yukishio Kabuto has learned to raise the dead,” he says. “You defeated Orochimaru. There aren’t many here who can say they could do the same, especially when ill. You’re a kunoichi of Konoha again, Sasuke, and this is for the good of the village. Besides,” he adds, “I was the one who convinced the others it was safe to give you such a light sentence. Do you enjoy this life you’ve carved for yourself? A few words from me, and all that will disappear.”

She closes her eyes for a moment, breathes in, breathes out, and thinks over her options. She thinks of Naruto walking through the streets with his arm casually around her shoulders, openly displaying their friendship of some sort of dare, of Sakura defending her to every old classmate whose eyes still narrow with his distrust regardless of the number of times Sasuke argues she can take care of herself. She thinks of quietly sharing breakfast with Kakashi, both saying nothing, and him turning down the sheets of that bed at the inn.

“Fine,” she says, and the word tastes like solanaceae in her mouth. “But, Danzo-san? If you fuck me over, I will trap you in a Tsukuyomi so long, and so powerful, you’ll never wake up.”

At that, they make a deal, and she feels as though she bartered away her soul.

 

 

When Sasuke begins taking solo missions, her team doesn’t ask. When she says she wants to move out, Kakashi helps her search for an affordable apartment. When she shows up at his doorstep at three in the morning on a Tuesday, covered in dried blood that isn’t hers and thankfully not in armor or her mask, he lets her inside and half carries her to the bathroom.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and he doesn’t even make it out of the bathroom before she’s stepping into the shower, clothes clinging to her body as the blood slides off. “I couldn’t make it to the other side of the village, I just couldn’t.”

He opts not to leave, and next thing she knows, he’s there too, squeezing shampoo onto her head and bumping her elbow against the tiled wall. She doesn’t know when she started crying. “I recognize the under clothes,” he says as she reaches up, brushing away tears. “I thought this was what happened. This wasn’t your choice, I’m taking it.”

Even with her clothes on, she can still clean herself, and while he works on her hair, she scrubs herself so hard her pale skin turns pink. “When’s it ever?” she answers, then giggles, the sound out of place, nervous and absorbed by the spray. “Did you know certain wind jutsu manipulated by the Rinnegan can literally rip a person apart? Because I didn’t. But hey, what other choice do I have when using natural lightning to strike a person doesn’t fucking work?”

Somehow, he has conditioner, and then she realizes it’s because her set is still here. “Who did you kill that _Kirin_ didn’t work on?”

“Well, I guess it doesn’t matter if you know,” she says, starting on her legs. “Kabuto, Orochimaru’s second in command. It’s going to be all over Konoha by morning. But—but he had all these dead risen, too, and then all died, or re-died, or I don’t know, when he did, and my chakra was low after all that, and I was weak, and like this huge portion of the forest is on fire with Amaterasu right now, and—”

Before she can finish, she slips on soap, bangs her head against the faucet and her knee against the sliding glass cover of the shower as her foot twists under her. Kakashi, as graceful as she normally is, kneels in front of her, and his grey hair darkens like a storm cloud. “This blood’s too fresh,” he says, and it’s almost amazing, really, how safe she feels around him. “Sasuke, what happened?”

To him, her safety was more important than the mission, and that’s so refreshing, and she says, “The nearest village isn’t far away. I was weak, but not weak enough that I couldn’t draw a kunai and stab a cut a guy’s throat.”

Without a word, Kakashi pulls her into a hug. They stay that way until the water runs cold.

 

 

Going after Kabuto put her in enough danger to warrant too much of an issue for Danzo if Sasuke tells the Godaime it wasn’t accidental that a threat releases her from his service. It doesn’t exempt her from another session with Naomi, though, and one genuine emotion breakdown later, and she’s handed back to Kakashi.

I’m an unwanted kitten, she thinks, but then he hugs her again, and she thinks maybe that isn’t entirely true. Even when there’s no one else left, she always has him.

A few weeks later, Obito and Kisame attempt to capture the remaining Jinchuruki in Kumo, and a Kage Summit is organized. As Sasuke’s the only one with proven capability to kill him, despite her familial connection, Team Kakashi is called as the Godaime’s body guards. By now, Sasuke’s too tired to argue.

The night before departure, Kakashi and Sasuke spend it without the other three, playing a game of shogi she’s dismal at because she doesn’t have the patience. It’s spring again, only a few months before she turns seventeen, and already too muggy for her comfort. “I could turn on the fan,” he says after she moves her hair away from her neck for the dozenth time and finally, she relents.

It rattles, barely any use, but any relief at all is welcome. “It’s going to rain soon,” she says. “I like when it rains.”

This is as close as she’ll get to admitting sometimes she deeply misses Ame. Recently, they received news of Konan’s death, and Kakashi was the only one to see her cry. “Yeah,” he says. “It will.” He pauses, then adds, “Are you going to be all right with this?”

She doesn’t look up as she moves a piece forward. “Will you?”

As expected, he doesn’t have an answer. That’s good, because neither does she.

 

 

Sasuke makes it to the first campsite of the journey back from the Summit before she has to walk away from the group. By the time Kakashi finds her, she’s lying on the frosted grass surrounded by trees charred from lightning, and cut deep from weapons nowhere to be found. The spare coat someone lent to her from the Iron Country is thrown over a branch, and the cold’s turned her body numb.

Though she doesn’t look over, and his feet are silent even on the frozen ground, she hears a rustle of fabric that can’t be anything other than the coat being moved. A moment later, it’s thrown over her, a heavy, suffocating weight on her chest made of downy feathers and wool. “Your immune system’s terrible already,” he says, crouching down at her side. “Put it on before you get sick from exposure.”

“You don’t get sick from the cold,” she says, and wishes it were snowing. There’s a noise in her head blocking out coherent thought, dull and constant like cicadas at the height of summer, and the uniformity of those grey clouds would be a good mirror of that. “If you’re here because everyone’s afraid I’m about to run off, I’m not, so just—five minutes. I want five minutes to myself. Is that seriously too much to ask?”

He runs his fingers through his hair. “It’s not that you might run off,” he says. “It’s that you’re at risk being alone.”

As it turns out, she wasn’t ready. Kumo, Kiri, and Suna all dropped their boundaries, but Iwa’s is firmly in place. If the embarrassment of that conversation hadn’t been enough, Obito showed up, and he’s convinced Konoha brainwashed her while Konoha’s convinced he did the same, and she doesn’t understand why no one will understand that she made her own choices, whether they agree with them or not. That Iwa-nin might’ve called her a whore, but at least in any instance that could refer to, she was the one in control. Now she doesn’t know what she is, but it certainly isn’t that.

When she sits, the coat slides off, and unless it’s against Obito, she’s normally in control of fights, too. She’s not used to being on the defensive. “He won’t be coming to try and capture me this time, all right?” she says. “He’ll think it’s a mercy kill. You’ll hear if there’s a fight. _Please_ , just give me a few minutes alone.”

It really says something about her life, she thinks, that when he says, “Fine, but only if you put back on your coat,” that she’s surprised to get her way.

After he leaves, she slips it on. It’s hot, leaving her skin feeling feverish, and the cold air cuts into her throat and lungs.

 

 

Next is an attack on Root, and if anyone notices Sasuke gave Obito an opening to kill Shimura Danzo, they don’t say. There’s a mass funeral afterwards, and an extended stay in the hospital keeps her from going. Between an Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan and a naturally evolved Rinnegan, her eyes are still stronger than his, but just because she has the capability to kill him doesn’t mean she actually can. It also doesn’t mean she wants to.

When she comes home, it’s late, and the lights are on. “You’re not supposed to be released for another two days,” Kakashi says as she nudges off her shoes.

Shrugging, she says, “Wasn’t up for spending any more time there. And don’t be a hypocrite, you never spend the full amount of time, either.”

“I’ve never been as injured as you just were,” he says, and again, she shrugs. “Sasuke—”

“Kakashi, I just want to go to sleep,” she says, turning to look at him. His worry’s undisguised, and she hates and loves him for actually caring all at the same time. “I don’t think I slept without Sakura forcing me into it my whole time there.”

It’s hard, coming to terms with the fact that the last of her family is actively trying to kill her. This isn’t even out of malicious intent; he just thinks it’s the best option for her. Kisame would probably have words about that, if he knew. Or maybe does, and just feels too betrayed. Whatever it is, though, sleeping’s impossible when every time she shuts her eyes, she can see the chakra chains aimed to trap her in place. She doesn’t know what would have happened if she hadn’t had enough chakra to use the Rinnegan to get away. She doesn’t know what would’ve happened if she hadn’t followed him into Kamui, and ripped his out. That was one of the single worst moments of her life.

Maybe it’s the Uchiha legacy to kill your family. Regardless of who dies, she or Obito, the clan line ends with them. The other life that could have been, the one where every lived and she married Shisui and died and he took over as clan head—there’s no _could have been_ in there after all. This family has two endings, and neither of them are good.

At least if it ends with her, the world won’t be caught in some illusion in the process.

“If you still have trouble,” Kakashi says, “I’m just the room over. You don’t need to be scared.”

She lies, says she isn’t, and doesn’t sleep more than hour.

 

 

Sasuke signs on to ANBU again, and illegally tells Kakashi because this time, she doesn’t want to move out. “Obito’s just mixing it up,” she says, twirling an empty glass of water in her hands. “I’ve tried talking to him. If there’s no way to reason with him, then I have one option, and I don’t want the rest of you anywhere near him.”

Kakashi looks to her steadily, leaning against his kitchen table. “He said something to you,” he says. “You’ve been acting off since Root.”

“Look,” she says, standing from the couch to put her cup in the sink, “even when I was still with the Akatsuki, we had some really weird conversations. There’s pretty much nothing he can say that can phase me. But putting Naruto near him is a bad idea because of the Kyuubi, and if I’m ever knocked out of commission, do you really think he isn’t going to go for it? My eyes just overpower his. And he hates you. Like a lot.”

After a short pause, Kakashi says, “I’ve told you about Rin.” She nods, and doesn’t mention that Obito has, too. “The last thing he told me before we left him was that I needed to protect her. He grew up in Konoha. Average, but not unhappy, and was here all the way ‘til fifteen. From what you’ve told me about what happened to him, Madara probably gave him something to fixate on to shift his loyalties.”

Obito wasn’t confused, is what Kakashi means, unlike Sasuke. People love to give her excuses, and keep her innocent. “Yeah, well, if it was to fixate on his old Academy years crush,” she says, “he did a good job. Did anything ever end up happening between the two you? You and the girl, I mean. Rin.”

There’s another pause. “We kissed,” Kakashi says, “and that’s it. We were supposed to go on a date after the mission. Then everything went wrong.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, and hopes its the sincerity that comes across rather than jealousy over someone else’s standard she’s been held to, again. “I wish I could’ve met her. She must’ve been really great.”

“Yeah,” Kakashi says. “She was.”

They fall silent, and neither try to break it. According to Obito, Sasuke’s now just another person Kakashi stole. Rin must’ve been something special, but Sasuke thinks the girl might’ve gotten off easy, too, because at least she never had to put up with this.

 

 

After Uchiha Obito dies, he doesn’t get a funeral. Sasuke accidentally falls asleep with Kakashi on the living room floor, and wakes to find she ended up on top of him at some point, head on his chest with one of his arms casually thrown around her.

She should move, and she knows it, but the warm sunlight of a June morning is coming through the window, and she’s more comfortable than she has right to be. He’s still asleep, which is rare, and his heartbeat and the movement of his chest are steady. After another stay in the hospital, the last thing she wants to do is wake up early, awkward situations be damned. By now, she thinks the two of them are past the point of discomfort, anyway.

Within ten minutes, she’s back to sleep, and wouldn’t mind blocking out the world for much longer than a few hours at most.

 

 

When Sasuke’s eighteen, she and Kakashi kiss on the couch of their apartment. His mask is off; they’re both still dressed for the chuunin exam festival continuing outside. It’s night, the sky cloudless and the moon bright, and she doesn’t know how long they’ve been inching towards this, but she knows it’s been a while.

The kiss isn’t the most gentle she’s received, but it’s the most fragile. Sasuke doesn’t know much about romance, but she knows this has little do with fitting together. They’re both too broken for that, haphazard and close to shattering. It’s less about the perfect fit, and more that their jagged edges line up. He’s far from family approved, and she’s not Rin. In this case, that’s how it should be.

We’ll be all right, she thinks, and appreciates that for now, it doesn’t go any further than this.

**Author's Note:**

> I know the rest of Team Seven and the other characters fell out of existence in this story, but don't worry, they'll be back. I have other stories planned. And no, there's not a war plot in this. That would just be too much going on at once.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Izanami in the Land of the Dead](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3489845) by [ShoshannaRose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShoshannaRose/pseuds/ShoshannaRose)




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